Chapter Text
Marisa, VP of Financial Operations – Finance Division, Level 44
There was a certain rhythm to the finance floors.
The relentless click of keyboards. The occasional slap of a stapler. The ever-present aroma of slightly burnt espresso drifting from the break room. In Marisa’s opinion, it was the closest thing to a living organism an office could get: self-regulating, lightly caffeinated, and prone to muttering about budget overages like an old man with opinions.
Marisa, for her part, had just come from a glass-walled huddle room where the marketing team had nearly imploded over licensing allocations. She wasn’t particularly stressed about it. Jake had found his footing halfway through the meeting, and the retrofit issue would resolve itself once Legal pulled their heads out of the Oslo contracts. Besides, she’d already slotted the tax deferments where they needed to go. Unless something burst into flames before Friday, it wasn’t her problem anymore.
Now she was in a different room, smaller and blessedly free of raised voices. It was just her and Naomi, one of the junior analysts from the sustainability side, hunched over her laptop like she hoped the carpet would open up and swallow her. Marisa resisted the urge to sigh.
The projection graphs for the upcoming Q3 sustainability initiatives were still skewing too low on long-term ROI, and Naomi was struggling to articulate why. Not because Naomi wasn’t brilliant… she absolutely was. Just not brilliant at conflict, or confidence, or making eye contact when numbers went bad.
“Naomi,” she said, setting her coffee down, “either we frontload eighteen million and we know why, or someone’s getting fired with a beautifully illustrated burn chart.”
Naomi gave a tight smile and pointed at the model again. “Okay, so the upfront cost spike is tied to that new carbon capture contract out of Oslo. Legal’s slow-walking the credit certs, but if we move the licensing to next quarter—”
“We lose green tax leverage,” Marisa said, not unkindly. “Cool. Push back the retrofit. Slide the costs. Anchor them to Q1.”
“I already did,” Naomi said, a bit quietly. “Slide 7.”
Marisa flicked to it. That was better. She allowed herself the smallest smile. “See? I’d rather you show me the fix than wait for permission.”
That earned her a real grin. Naomi relaxed by maybe three percent. A victory.
“Good work,” Marisa added, closing her notebook. “Update the notes in the deck and send it to ops before the end of the day. And seriously, eat something.”
Naomi laughed softly. “Yes, ma’am.”
Marisa gathered her things and gave a parting nod before slipping out of the room.
She moved on autopilot, weaving past cubicles and nodding at a few familiar faces. She slowed briefly near the strategy pod, where Jake was leaning over a shared monitor.
“Naomi’s looping in ops,” she said quietly as she passed. “Retrofit’s getting pushed, but it won’t block approvals.”
Jake gave a small nod, eyes still on the screen. “Got it.”
End of story.
She was halfway to the southeast break room when she caught it.
“He’s here again. That’s the third time this week.”
The words came from a group of associates clustered too casually by the copy machine, voices low in a way that only drew more attention to them.
Marisa didn’t turn.
She selected a granola bar from the wire rack beside the coffee station, tore the wrapper, and took a bite. Tough, too sweet. Way too many sunflower seeds.
She chewed slowly, listening.
“Is that him?” someone hissed, not even pretending to whisper.
“That’s the kid, right?”
A scoff. “I thought he was, like, an intern or something.”
“Jesus, Tammy—he’s not just an intern. That rumor died weeks ago. Do you even read the group chats?”
Marisa glanced up, and there he was, standing near Ms. Potts at the edge of the floor, just outside the conference room by Legal. The kid—because really, that’s what he’d been to her until security had grudgingly coughed up his name after weeks of speculation—was mid-conversation, talking fast, gesturing a little, clearly asking permission for something. Nothing loud or disruptive. Just there.
The object of all office gossip lately.
Marisa wasn’t complaining. The idea that Tony Stark might have some kind of secret… whatever-he-was skulking around Finance was easily the most interesting thing to happen since Legal accidentally CC’d a senator.
Ms. Potts gave him that look she used when she was trying very hard not to smile, arms crossed, nodding slightly as he explained something that probably shouldn’t require that much enthusiasm. Marisa couldn’t hear what he said, but whatever it was, it earned a resigned sigh and a quick tap on Pepper’s StarkPad. The kind of resigned that looked an awful lot like fondness if you’d known Ms. Potts through more than one fiscal year.
A moment later, Peter stepped back, grinning. He gave Ms. Potts a quick, grateful wave, then turned and walked off. Marisa chewed on her granola bar, watching him weave past Legal, then Business Strategy, before disappearing into the southeast exit corridor.
“He has clearance on the R&D Floor, I swear—my cousin’s in Biotech and saw him walking around the AI department like he owns it.” A beat, then lower: “Which, I mean. Maybe he does?”
“Doesn’t he have, like, all access?”
“Uh, yeah.” A snort. “Carl from Security said he doesn’t even badge in.”
“Wait, what? He doesn’t badge at all?”
“Nope.” Leaning in, conspiratorial. “Doesn’t need to. Word is he doesn’t even use the main entrance.”
“Okay, but like… who is he then? Stark’s kid?”
“I mean, no one’s said that. No announcement, no press release. Not even one of those weird internal memos with the NDA footer.”
“So he’s not official?”
“Nope. But apparently Mr. Stark brought him into the boardroom a few weeks back.”
Someone exhaled through their teeth. “…That’s weird, right?”
“Everything about this is weird.”
Marisa raised one brow. “Okay,” she muttered, mostly to herself.
It wasn’t even the strangest part of her day.
Later that afternoon, during a quarterly planning sync, someone had the bright idea to include a slide titled Projected Stark Succession Plan, complete with org chart boxes and Peter’s face poorly photoshopped above Pepper’s. It got a laugh, even from the CFO.
Mostly a joke.
But no one deleted the slide.
Daniel, Systems Integration Engineer – R&D Division, Level 25
By ten-thirty, Daniel had already fixed two hardware routing conflicts, recompiled a module three times because someone upstream couldn’t label their ports properly, and fielded a first-year intern asking whether Mr. Stark used “a lot of math” when inventing things.
He told them no, Stark just vibes it out. Absolutely not true. But it got them to leave.
The floor reeked of deodorant and nerves. Someone was already yelling at the printer. One guy had worn a suit. No one said anything, but everyone knew why. First Showcase Day, probably. Missed the memo about casual wear still being the norm.
Daniel’s desk, like most on Level 25, was part of a semi-open cluster of integration staff, people who made other people’s cutting-edge tech play nicely together, usually through sheer force of will and late nights with a debugger.
He was halfway through re-commenting a block of firmware when the overhead chime sounded. Not the general building-wide one, but the soft tone reserved for internal division alerts. Everyone nearby paused. A few heads lifted, like meerkats in shirts and jackets. Someone dropped a stylus.
Then the speakers clicked.
“Morning, everyone,” came the voice of Cassandra, Director of Engineering Ops for R&D. “As a reminder, Showcase presentations begin promptly at eleven. Please direct any last-minute tech issues to your assigned lead, and no, we will not be ‘just shifting things ten minutes’ to accommodate poor time management.”
A quiet snort came from someone behind Daniel’s partition. He didn’t blame them.
“One additional note,” Cassandra continued. “Mr. Stark will be in attendance and has elected to bring a guest. Please do not start a betting pool.”
The line cut off.
For a few beats, no one said anything. Then the entire aisle exhaled like a pressure valve.
“I’m starting a betting pool!” someone yelled from the northeast quad.
“Goddammit, Trent,” came a second voice, instantly. “She said not to.”
“She always says that.”
A few chairs scraped back. A whiteboard marker squeaked against plastic. Someone—Daniel thought it might be Luc from comms—made a dramatic ding! sound, like announcing the start of a game show.
Daniel leaned back in his chair and looked across the bullpen toward Mariana, who handled optics. She had her elbow propped on the desk divider and was watching the chaos unfold with resigned amusement.
“A guest,” Daniel said flatly.
She didn’t even look surprised. “We taking bets on whether it’s human?”
Daniel snorted. He minimized his terminal, then stood and stretched just enough to crack something in his lower back.
Somewhere across the floor, someone asked if anyone had odds on whether the guest would be a senator, a celebrity, or some startup guy trying to license an arc reactor for something ridiculous. If so, Mr. Stark would probably be humoring him, mostly for his own amusement. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Bet it’s that kid,” Mariana muttered.
Daniel made a face. Not this again. “Stark’s secret spawn?”
She gave a half-shrug, a small smile tugging at her lips. “That’s what people are saying.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Why would he bring a middle-schooler into an engineering showcase?”
“Apparently, he’s sixteen,” Mariana said, lowering her voice a notch. “Heard he’s interning. Or whatever you call it when daddy hands you a security badge. Nobody’s really clear on the details.”
Daniel scoffed and leaned back in his chair. “Intern? Seriously? What’s the point of interning for your own dad?”
She smiled, shaking her head. “Gotta start grooming the heir young, right?”
“Fantastic,” Daniel muttered, rubbing his temples. “I was failing differential equations at sixteen.”
Mariana leaned back, taking a sip from a mug that probably hadn’t held coffee since Tuesday. “Word is, he coded some kind of failsafe patch for the Mark-whatever suit.”
Daniel snorted. The rumor mill had already spun wilder tales. Last week, someone swore the kid had single-handedly debugged FRIDAY. (Unlikely. Stark wouldn’t let a teenager near his precious AI, even if they shared DNA.)
“Probably while waiting for brunch at Soho House,” he said. “You know, in between trust fund meetings.”
Mariana rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Dan, at least wait until you meet the kid before writing him off.”
“I feel like I already know him,” Daniel said, tapping his temple. “Peter this, Peter that. Whole damn building won’t shut up about him.”
“Relax. Your precious integration team isn’t even participating today. Stark Junior can’t upstage what isn’t in the game,” Mariana said, kicking her feet up on a nearby chair.
Daniel scanned the schedule on his tablet. “Optics got anything?”
“Nah. Just some intern’s pet project coming up.” She raised her mug in mock salute. “So go ahead, be your usual bitter self. Free pass today.”
By ten fifty-five, the usual migration had begun. Engineers were gathering in clumps near the hallway, clutching tablets and travel mugs and portable prototypes. Daniel trailed the crowd down to the R&D guest conference area, a wide, modular seminar room with collapsible walls, overhead projectors, and enough folding chairs to seat the better half of a TED Talk.
He and Mariana split off naturally, her veering toward the left bank of seats where the optics team had already started claiming their usual cluster. Daniel found his own people near the middle right, where integration tended to roost. They were within view of the screen, but not close enough to be volunteered as impromptu tech support.
“Yo,” said Jason, one of the saner integration engineers. He was already in the next seat, bumping Daniel’s elbow lightly as he dropped into place. “You bring something?”
“Nope,” Daniel said, sinking into the chair. “How’s the pool?”
“Trent’s already taking second bets. I went with Director Cho bringing another biometric patent guy from Singapore. Or a DJ.”
“Bold.”
“Not bold. Statistically overdue. You betting?”
Daniel shook his head. “Not into speculation. I like surprises to stay surprising.”
Jason snorted. “That’s what everyone who thinks they’re losing says.”
Behind them, someone was trying to sync a clicker with the projector. A little mechanical beep rang out, then a different beep, then a soft “shit” from whoever was managing the room AV this week. Cassandra stepped up to the front, armed with a tablet, a wireless mic, and her standard air of thinly veiled exhaustion.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said, and a few people reflexively reached for their styluses.
Daniel stifled a sigh. Cassandra’s opening monologues were part pep talk, part threat, and part polite scolding. Like being addressed by a school principal who ran teams instead of classrooms.
“We’ve got a packed schedule today,” she continued. “A mix of early-stage ideas, revisions on existing R&D concepts, and yes—before you ask—yes, some of the interns are presenting. Please be kind. Remember, you were all once that overcaffeinated and underpaid.”
Quiet chuckles rippled through the room.
Daniel leaned sideways to Jason. “God, this is giving me Oscorp flashbacks.”
Jason raised an eyebrow. “That bad?”
“Worse. We used to run daily scrums in full suits.”
Jason made a face of genuine horror. “Monsters.”
“Right?”
Behind them, a familiar voice whispered loudly, “I just hope Stark shows up soon. If we have to sit through a patent pitch without explosions, I’m going to flatline.”
Daniel didn’t need to turn around to know it was Trent.
Cassandra tapped her mic. “We’ll be starting shortly. Mr. Stark is—unsurprisingly—running a few minutes behind. He’s asked to make a brief opening statement before we begin, so presentations will start as soon as he arrives.”
That stirred the room. A few heads turned. Whisper volume increased.
Jason gave Daniel a pointed look. “Since when does Stark do opening statements? Half the time he no-shows, the other half he wanders in halfway through like he’s at a fucking coffee run.”
“Because he doesn’t give a shit,” Daniel said. “This is way below his radar.”
“Unless—” Trent piped up from behind, —he’s got someone to introduce. Formally.”
“Oh my God,” Daniel muttered. “Can you all shut up about the kid for one second?”
He glanced across the room and caught Mariana’s eye. She wiggled her eyebrows at him like she was watching a soap opera.
He looked away. This was getting absurd.
Daniel sat back, arms crossed.
The whole thing had spiraled out of proportion. So Stark had a kid. Great. The presence or absence of teenage progeny affected precisely zero percent of R&D output. But for months now, the office had turned it into a goddamn legend. Stories about the kid hacking FRIDAY, reprogramming Widow’s bites, reverse-engineering Iron Man suit protocols over breakfast.
Daniel didn’t buy it. None of it.
The kid was probably a decently smart high schooler, sure, but more likely to inherit a board seat than a soldering iron. Which was fine. Not everyone needed to be an engineer. Not everyone should be. But the way everyone kept talking about him like he was the second coming of von Neumann? Ridiculous.
This was just good old-fashioned nepotism, with a few sci-fi accessories slapped on.
Around them, a small crowd was starting to form. Trent was sitting just behind Daniel, arms crossed, his usual smile in place as a few of the other techs nervously eyed him, probably hoping to place bets on the latest developments. Trent refused to take any more wagers.
“This new info is totally unfair to the early birds,” he muttered, shaking his head. Daniel resisted the urge to sigh.
Then, without any fanfare, the doors slid open with a soft sigh. Tony Stark walked in like he always did, like he’d just remembered he was supposed to be somewhere. He had his sunglasses on, because of course he did. Indoors, under full-spectrum LEDs, at eleven in the morning. Daniel never got used to that. It was objectively ridiculous, and somehow it still kind of worked.
Just behind him was the kid. Not quite tucked behind Stark’s shoulder, but hovering just slightly off to the side, the way someone might if they weren’t exactly hiding but also weren’t totally sure where to stand. He wasn’t much shorter than Stark, only by an inch or two, but he looked smaller somehow. Narrow-shouldered. A little hunched. Like he was holding in the urge to shove his hands into his pockets and disappear into the floor.
At least he hadn’t worn a suit. Daniel had been vaguely worried about that. Peter had shown up in a t-shirt and jeans, no lanyard, no badge. Just a kid trailing after the most famous man in the building.
Trent leaned forward and whispered, “Damn. Lotta people bet on the kid. Pool’s gonna tank. Gotta recalculate the spread.”
Daniel didn’t turn. “You’re the worst,” he said under his breath.
At the front of the room, Stark gave Cassandra a quick handshake, then nudged Peter forward to do the same. Everyone was trying very hard not to look like they were watching. Daniel couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it seemed cordial enough.
Tony stepped up to the podium and tapped the mic with one finger, just enough to make it squeal. The room flinched.
“Morning, nerds,” Stark said.
A few polite chuckles floated up. Cassandra gave him a look, but not a real one.
“Sorry for the delay. Had to drag someone out of bed.” He clapped Peter on the shoulder like he’d just yanked him out of detention, not a multimillion-dollar lab. “This is Peter. He’s been shadowing me for—God, almost a year? Jesus. You people get older or is it just me?”
More awkward chuckles. Stark continued without waiting for a reply.
“He’s gonna be doing a little pitch at the end of the showcase, so if you feel like sticking around and pretending to care, you’ll get to see what he’s been up to. Shouldn’t conflict with your standing appointments to silently judge each other’s sprint progress.”
He turned to Peter. “Wanna say something, kid?”
Peter blinked at him, then stepped up to the mic. His hands didn’t shake, but Daniel noticed the way he shifted his weight from foot to foot like he wasn’t sure he’d be allowed to stand still.
“Uh—hi,” Peter said. “I’m Peter. It’s really great to be here. I’ve been working on some stuff I’m excited to share, so… thanks for letting me crash your demo day.”
Short and quiet. Totally normal.
Behind him, Trent muttered, “Oh. Huh.”
Jason leaned over. “He’s not exactly what I pictured.”
Daniel grunted. He wasn’t either.
Peter and Stark stepped down and took two of the only remaining seats in the first row, off to the side, the zone of exile no one ever willingly chose. Cassandra retook the mic, smiling just slightly tighter than before.
“Well, thank you, Mr. Stark,” she said, smoothing it over professionally. “And welcome, Peter. Let’s get started.”
The lights dimmed.
A few projectors blinked to life, and the first slide of the morning flickered on the massive screen at the front, some dusty title about near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy. Daniel didn’t even register the rest. Because while the room’s attention should have been shifting to the presentation, it absolutely wasn’t.
Everyone was trying, badly, to sneak glances at the two figures now seated in the dreaded front row, where the angle of the screen was awful and the audio was worse. You couldn’t really see much from where Daniel was, just vague silhouettes, but he could just make out the shape of Stark leaning toward the kid again, saying something quietly. He still had a hand on Peter’s shoulder, like he was giving him a pep talk before the spelling bee or something.
Daniel paused. Did Stark really say he got him out of bed?
He replayed it in his head. Yeah. Had to drag someone out of bed. That was what he’d said. Casually. Publicly. Which, if you thought about it, was basically an admission, wasn’t it?
He shifted in his seat.
The rumors hadn’t started until maybe two months ago, max. If he’d really been around for a year, then either Peter was incredibly good at staying invisible, or someone had gone to great lengths to keep it under wraps. And why exactly?
Was it just a retroactive internship timeline? A little narrative cover-up to make him seem more legit? Or was that an unintentional slip, some kind of weird acknowledgement that Stark had known him longer than anyone thought? Maybe even… Daniel didn’t know. He didn’t like speculating.
But he also couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He glanced at Trent.
Trent was already halfway down a rabbit hole on his phone. Calculator app open. Figures scrolling. Daniel rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. Of course he was doing the math on the betting pool.
And of course, because the day had decided to personally offend him, the optics intern gave an actually fantastic presentation. No shaky transitions, no overdesigned slides, just clean, simple data and a clear application. The room even clapped a little louder than usual when he finished.
So now Daniel couldn’t even be righteously pissy.
The last of the scheduled presentations wrapped up to polite applause. The presenter clicked out of their final slide. And then nothing. Nobody moved.
He glanced around, surprised. Not one person so much as shifted in their seat.
That was not normal.
In R&D, it was tradition—hell, it was gospel—that the moment the last presenter said “thank you,” everyone stood up like they’d been released from purgatory. Presentations usually ended around one, and Cassandra always had to basically beg to say closing remarks over the rustling of backpacks and the squeak of chairs.
But now? Silence. The entire room, dozens of people, still as statues.
They were all waiting.
Daniel stayed seated.
He could almost feel Mariana’s smirk stretch across the room like someone had drawn it on her face with a Sharpie. He didn’t look at her. He wanted to stand, purely out of spite, but, well. Curiosity was a hell of a thing.
He’d always been an engineer. Always needed to know how things worked. And maybe—maybe—he wanted to know how this worked too. Even if it meant enduring Mariana’s smugness for the next week.
Up front, Stark said something again, low enough that no one could hear. He patted Peter on the back. Twice. Peter stood, small and a little stiff, and pulled a flash drive from his pocket.
He crossed to the side computer and plugged it in. He moved fast, like someone used to the setup. His presentation hadn’t been queued with the rest but it popped up in seconds. Stark Industries template. Standard fonts. Standard colors. Respectable. Restraint, even. Damn it.
Peter stepped up to the mic, adjusting it a little too high before lowering it back down again. His hand hovered awkwardly near the clicker.
He cleared his throat once.
“Uh, hey,” he said. “Thanks for staying. I wasn’t expecting this many people, so… yeah. That’s cool.”
A ripple of chuckles and a few small smiles. It was awkward, but not painfully. Just enough to be endearing.
“So, uh—this isn’t exactly the most polished thing, but it’s something I’ve been working on for a while. The working title is: Optimized Tactile Feedback Loops in Soft Robotics for Medical Application.”
That got a few heads to turn. Including Daniel’s.
Okay. That wasn’t a science fair project. That wasn’t even an ambitious high school project.
Peter clicked to the next slide. And then the next. And then he started explaining.
Messily.
It was obvious from the first thirty seconds that the kid was a rambler. His slides weren’t messy, they were clean, almost suspiciously well-formatted, but his delivery kept jumping tracks. He’d wander into a tangent about a prototype he tried to 3D print in his school’s makerspace and then yank himself back mid-sentence to clarify a bit of coding logic that was only kind of relevant. He didn’t really pause between sections, and every so often he’d get too excited and toss in a “well, anyway, never mind that” like he was arguing with himself.
But it was clever.
It was so clever.
Daniel looked around, pretending to scan the room like a bored manager, but really he was trying to gauge if he was the only one feeling it.
He wasn’t.
Even Jason had gone quiet beside him.
Sure, it was messy. But underneath the chaotic delivery was a thesis that was actually… kind of brilliant. Real-time pressure mapping using low-cost materials. Dynamic reactivity in prosthetics. Application modeling for muscle-mimicking flexors. The kind of work that interns, college seniors, only sometimes scratched at.
Daniel exhaled slowly. He looked again toward the front.
From this angle, he couldn’t really see Peter’s face, not directly. But Stark? Stark was turned in his seat, fully engaged, one arm resting on the back of the chair beside him like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to clap early. That man was grinning. Not just smiling. Grinning, wide and proud like he’d just seen a prototype go airborne.
Daniel swallowed. This was Stark’s kid.
The presentation rolled to its end. Peter mumbled something about error margins, and then sort of half-laughed and said, “I know that was a lot. Um, thanks for listening.”
For half a beat, no one moved. Then Stark stood. He started clapping, no hesitation, like he’d been waiting to do it since slide three.
Applause followed quickly. Not polite. Not forced. Actual applause. Some people even whistled.
Peter beamed, just for a moment, then immediately looked down at his shoes like he didn’t know what to do with himself. He mouthed “thank you,” once, then again, but you couldn’t really hear it over the noise.
Stark was already climbing the steps to the stage, smooth as ever, and by the time the applause tapered off, he had an arm around Peter’s shoulder and one hand on the mic.
“Well,” Tony said, “that’s the kind of half-baked brilliance I would’ve come up with at sixteen. Must run in the blood—metaphorically speaking.”
Jason, Trent, and Daniel all shared a look. Jason blinked once. Trent’s eyebrows slowly rose. Daniel almost snorted. That was it. A live, completely unrehearsed, zero-subtlety confession.
Stark went on like nothing happened.
“Anyway,” he said, patting Peter on the shoulder again, “thanks for sticking around. If you’ve got ideas, questions, thoughts, death threats—keep those to yourself, but anything else, Peter’ll be sticking around for a bit.”
He glanced toward the screen.
“Kid,” he said, half-under his breath but still caught by the mic. “You forgot the email slide.”
“Oh, crap,” Peter muttered, also picked up just barely. “Sorry, I was so nervous, I—”
There was a soft scramble as Peter fumbled with the clicker, cheeks clearly flaming. The final slide blinked onto the screen behind them, a crisp white background, the Stark Industries logo stamped clean in the corner, and an email in bold blue text.
Jason made a quiet wheeze next to Daniel.
“Oh my god,” he said, voice barely audible. “So it was bring your son to work day. I thought that was in May.”
From the row behind, Trent chuckled.
“Shit,” Daniel said. “Okay. I’ll admit it. Kid’s… something.”
“Confirmed?” Jason asked, side-eyeing him.
Daniel nodded once. “Confirmed.”
Trent leaned forward, grinning. “The group chats are gonna go feral. Someone’s got a recording, right?”
Daniel didn’t even hesitate. “Please. Ask Mariana. She’s had her phone out since slide two.”
“Of course she has,” Trent muttered, already texting. “God bless Mariana.”
Evan, Junior Technician – R&D Division, Level 32
After two grueling months of wrestling with a pressure sleeve that was definitely designed for someone with bigger arms, Evan finally swallowed his pride and asked for a smaller size. No one blinked. Except Amanda. She’d laughed when he told her about it later.
He hadn’t realized just how much soldering he’d be doing here, and after nearly losing feeling in his hands more than once, he figured a little ribbing from his supervisor was a fair trade-off for keeping his limbs intact.
It had been a month since that whole episode, which also marked his first trimester at Stark Industries. The best part? Evan was no longer the rookie. At least, not officially.
The downside? He now had to deal with one.
And as much as he sympathized—truly, he did—because starting at Stark Industries felt like being thrown headfirst into an arc reactor, Evan had so much to do, and exactly zero caffeine in his system. Which is probably why, when the new guy stopped him for the fifth time that morning (it was 9:03 a.m.), Evan sighed into his thermos instead of replying like a normal person.
They were posted up in one of the lab hallways. Well, “posted” was generous. Evan was leaning against the wall sipping from a thermos that had once contained coffee and now contained something pretending to be coffee. The new guy—Caleb, maybe?—was hovering beside him, looking like he was either about to ask a question or a favor. Or both.
“Hey,” Caleb said, fidgeting with the corner of his badge. “Can I ask you something kind of dumb?”
Evan didn’t look at him. Just let out a long, suffering breath through his nose. “Yeah. Sure. Why not. Hit me.”
Caleb gave him a sheepish little smile. “Okay, so. Is it true that Tony Stark has a son?”
Evan blinked. Then turned his head, slowly.
“You’ve been here three days.”
“I know, I know,” Caleb said, hands raised in surrender. “I wasn’t gonna bring it up, but I heard this guy talking at the security checkpoint… real casual, like he just assumed everyone knew.”
Evan stared at him.
“So then I asked Amanda,” Caleb went on, clearly sensing the cliff edge and swan-diving over it anyway. “And she just kind of rolled her eyes and said, ‘You new guys are way too gossipy for my taste.’ But she didn’t deny it. So…”
He trailed off, expectant.
Evan pinched the bridge of his nose. “You asked Amanda.”
“She’s my supervisor?”
“I know,” Evan muttered. “She’s mine, too.”
Which meant she’d definitely been talking about him, the original gossip. He sighed into his cup.
Caleb hesitated. “So… is that kid Mr. Stark’s or not?”
Evan opened his mouth.
He was going to answer—really, he was—but then a voice cut through the hallway as clean as a laser line, coming from somewhere just behind them:
“He’s mine. Came with the building, unfortunately.”
Evan stiffened.
Tony Stark strode past without so much as a glance. No warning, no follow-up. Just dropped the line and kept walking.
They watched him disappear around the corner. Evan stared after him, blinking once. Then again.
The new hire looked like he’d just seen a ghost. Or a god. Or both.
Evan finally said, “...So that’s a yes?”
Caleb glanced at him, wide-eyed.
“I don’t know, man.”
And that was that.